Project Argo

NFC tags scattered around Purdue's campus reveal a mysterious underground society. Work together to solve puzzles and challenges and to be the first to expose their secrets.

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Inspiration

An ARG (Alternative Reality Game) is an interactive networked narrative that uses the real world as a platform and employs transmedia storytelling to deliver a story that may be altered by players' ideas or actions (from Wikipedia).

Creating an ARG has been a thought on our minds for a while now. Our goal was a mystery that dedicated internet sleuths would try and solve just for fun while we watch them power through difficult clues. Some of us have grown up with movies of treasure hunts, and more recently, thrillers that incorporate technology to foster real world physical interactions amongst friends and strangers.

What it does

Project Argo is a platform that offers:

  • Linear Clue/Literature disclosure system
  • Interactive multi-party challenge matchmaking
  • NFC Tag tracking network
  • Anti-cheating measures

To demonstrate the capabilities of Project Argo, a Purdue-centric story was created and is playable as you are reading this:

  • Fosters exploration of Purdue's campus and lore
  • Encourages teamwork and collaboration
  • Engaging historically-informed fiction about a secret society posing as a Purdue club

How we built it

Project Argo is written in C#, utilizing ASP.NET and Razor server sided web pages. The admin dashboard was developed using Python and Dash. Custom CSS libraries were used to make the Windows 95 inspired interfaces.

Challenges we ran into

Feature creep is something that plagued the team as they found many pieces of functionality necessary with very short notices.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Great looking nostalgic interface
  • Great user experience
  • Great story elements

What we learned

  • Integrating puzzle-creation into a narrative requires extra attention to provide a coherent experience that keeps players in the flow of solving increasingly difficult challenges that also aren't unbearably complex.
  • Defining an MVP from the start focuses the team on completing strictly necessary components first, while leaving the optional features for if time allows. That way, a core working product can be demonstrated early on in development, bringing the entire team on the same page and letting the remaining features be filled in one by one.

What's next for Project Argo

Project Argo as a platform could become a generic tool used by ARG creators around the world to provision, track, and deploy their stories to their local audiences.

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